Gwanchoksa Temple

The Eunjin Mireuk at Gwanchoksa is one of the strangest things in Korean Buddhist sculpture and one of the most memorable: a standing Maitreya, over eighteen metres tall, carved from granite in the tenth and eleventh centuries and topped with a broad flat stone crown like a mortarboard, the head and hands deliberately oversized against the body. Set against the refined proportion of Silla sculpture it looks provincial, and that is the point - it is early Goryeo, made in a period when regional patrons worked at scale and to their own taste rather than to a court standard. A major conservation programme completed in the 2010s cleaned and stabilised it, and it was raised to National Treasure rank in 2018. Around the statue is a compact working temple with a stone lantern and pagoda in front of it. The compound is small; the figure is the visit.

What you actually see

• The Eunjin Mireuk - the eighteen-metre standing Maitreya.
• The flat stone crown - the broad hat over the head.
• The stone lantern and pagoda - in line before the statue.
• The small compound - a working temple around it.

When to go

April to June and September to November. Mornings are quiet. The site is compact and rarely takes more than an hour or two.

Honest expectations

There is one thing to see here. The proportions strike some visitors as crude rather than powerful. Ticketed, with limited English interpretation.

Nearby

Nonsan's Confucian academy at Donam and the Gyeryongsan temples are within reach.